


In a Name

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle (TV 2009)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Humor, Partners to Lovers, Romance, Schmoop, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-23 06:46:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23474083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: She doesn’t get mad at him any less often than she ever did. The two of them being … involved hasn’t changed that. If anything, more frequent togetherness provides more opportunities for getting mad at him. And maybe it’s messed up, but in the bedroom, there’s a certain payoff for being mad at him. If they make it to the bedroom. (The don’t make it to the bedroom a lot.)
Relationships: Kate Beckett & Richard Castle, Kate Beckett/Richard Castle
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	In a Name

**Author's Note:**

> Insert for Murder, He Wrote (5 x 04)

She doesn’t get mad at him any less often than she ever did. The two of them being … involved hasn’t changed that. If anything, more frequent togetherness provides more opportunities for getting mad at him. And maybe it’s messed up, but in the bedroom, there’s a certain payoff for being mad at him. If they make it to the bedroom. (The don’t make it to the bedroom a lot.) 

The difficulty now is in _staying_ mad at him, or even remembering why she was mad in the first place. Like now, for instance. He’s managed to sneak up on her, and that’s strike one. He’s made her jump out of her skin, and by the way, probably jinxed their whole weekend with his smarmy _T-Minus One Minute_ thing—strike two, and she’s being monumentally generous by bundling those. But worst of all, he wasn’t even supposed to be here. He had very strict instructions that he has _ignored_ in order to sneak up on her and make her jump, and that’s strike three, isn’t it? 

It’s definitely strike three, but he gives her that shy look and says he thought it would be fun to be together when the clock counted down. He gives her that _grin_ and he smells good and she hates him _so much_ and she can’t even remember why she had such a stupid plan about him waiting around the corner. She can’t imagine why she wouldn’t have wanted him here and it’s … maddeningly hard to stay mad at him. 

Until the boys show up, anyway. 

The klaxons inside her head start sounding right away when the boys show up. She does a rapid scan of the bullpen and calculates the most direct path to each and every fire alarm. She tries to remember what she knows about the likelihood of meteoroids surviving earth’s atmosphere and striking the planetary surface. She wonders if, likelihood be damned, New York might be due for just such a strike. She considers a million exit strategies, lightning fast, but it’s far too late for any of them. 

It was far too late the minute he showed up with his stupid, shy, good-smelling face and his instruction-flouting There _Wasn’t That Fun?_ grin. She braces for metaphorical impact. _T-minus Five, Four, Three—_

 _She’s going away with her_ boyfriend! 

Ryan jumps the count. Of course he jumps the count, because why should she have the last two seconds of peace she will ever know? She hates the three of them. She hates them all _so_ much, and him most of all. Him, with that moment of stunned joy that lights up his entire face—that instant of giddy, wonderful terror that draws her gaze inexorably to his—she definitely hates him most of all, though for the life of her, lost in that instant, she can’t remember why. 

And then he opens his mouth. 

_A_ boyfriend _! Beckett! Really?_

He opens his mouth and she remembers exactly why she’s mad at him. 

* * *

She has to wait for him by the car. That’s fuel for the fire. She has to _wait_ , and she’s thinking about the traffic they’ll be stuck in with the caravan of other weekenders. But she only has to wait a little bit. A _very_ little bit, and then he’s trotting, out of breath, to open the door for her, and she’s mad about that, too—the door opening and the fact that he couldn’t have waited ten seconds to come running after her and does he _want_ to be outed as the boyfriend? She’s mad about all that, and maddest of all that her cheeks, her neck, her whole upper chest are on fire because of the stupid _b_ word. 

She sits, rigid, in the passenger seat with her arms folded tight across her chest. He hums something tuneless from the driver’s seat. It clashes with whatever’s coming through the car’s extremely fancy sound system at low volume. It hits the cacophony of rush-hour traffic at dissonant right angles, and if she weren’t too mad at him to speak, she’d tell him to knock it off. 

But she _is_ too mad at him. He hums and manages the absolutely rage-inducing traffic with complete calm. She stares at the tail lights that are always, always, always exactly four feet in front of them, and she’s more and more world-without-end mad at him with each passing second. There’s something gratifying about holding on to it—about being able, for once, to hold on to it. She’s so preoccupied with holding on to it that she jumps out of her skin for the second time in far too few hours when he switches off the ignition. 

“What?” she blurts. Her voice is about fifteen times too loud for the quiet interior of the car. 

“Just a pitstop.” He has hold of her hand somehow. He’s pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “Just diner coffee, but it’s pretty good. We could go in if you want to stretch your legs a little—” The suggestion runs right into her glare. “I’ll bring you a cup,” he says quickly, and he’s gone. 

He’s tossing the car’s key fob into the air and catching it. He’s grinning as he sweeps the door open for a little girl who’s running out of the diner ahead of her parents. He’s being _cute_ and she is in such a stupid mad-at-him spiral that she wonders if they’re too far from the ocean for her to just walk out into the waves, never to return. 

She leans her forehead against the cool window glass and wonders what’s wrong with her. It’s a deep enough question that she’d be jumping out of her skin a third time if his exaggerated Hanna-Barbera tiptoeing weren’t the most attention-grabbing maneuver in the history of mankind. She glares at him through he glass as he sets two coffees and a white paper bag with something greasy and wonderful-smelling in it on the car’s roof. 

“Come on out for a minute,” he says as he pulls the door open. “Apple turnovers and coffee fresh from the pot.” He holds out his hand. “It’ll feel good to stand up.” 

She ignores his hand and hauls herself up and out. It feels good to stand up. That’s annoying. The coffee would give her favorite truck in the city a run for its money. That’s annoying, too. And the turnover is heaven on a stupid wax-paper square. She’d like to kick something, but she doesn’t. She stands with her back against the car, right next to him. The September breeze winds his scent around her. It’s all like a rock in her shoe or a phantom strand of hair clinging to the exact middle of her back. It’s _maddening_. 

“You told the boys you have a boyfriend,” he says at the exact moment her fury crests. “You told them you were going away with your boyfriend.” He’s hiding as much of his expression as he can behind careful sips of coffee, for all the good it does him. His face is lit up like carousel again. A stupid, shy, cute carousel. “You could have told them you were going to a funeral or to macrame camp or to visit your Aunt Gertrude—”

“I don’t _have_ an Aunt Gertrude,” she snaps. She _snaps_ , but the traitorous corners of her mouth are turning upward. The September breeze winds his rapture around her. 

“But you have a boyfriend.” He tips his head back. He turns the full force of his smile on the sky. “With whom you go away for romantic weekends.” 

“Nobody said anything about romance,” she grumbles, just for show. Just so if anyone asks she can say for sure she grumbled. “Not a _word_ about romance.” 

“It was implied.” He turns and takes her cup from her the exact second she’s finished with her last sip. He dabs at the corner of her mouth with the napkin in his hand, catching a stray turnover crumb. He heads for the trash can, calling over his shoulder as he goes. “Hot and heavy boyfriend romance was definitely implied.” 

“Hot and heavy,” she grumbles again as she clambers back into the passenger seat. “Ridiculous.” 

“Ridiculous,” he agrees as he starts the car and points them toward their destination. “Ridiculously romantic.”   
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I guess I left this as a prompt for myself a while ago. It’s ridiculous that Beckett would tell the boys she was going away with her boyfriend, when she could have told them anything. Except, of course, she was giddy with excitement about going away with her boyfriend. 


End file.
